Harrison, Council Member Freeman, Council Member Lockhart on the dais.

I do believe Councilmember Stallings is joining us electronically.

Is that true?

Yes.

Great.

We'll start go ahead and get started with a couple reminders.

Reminder number one: this is a work session, so there won't be any open uh public comment today.

And with that, we will open with an opening prayer from Council Member Newell.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we're grateful that we're able to gather here today as a city council and city staff and be able to discuss the the needs of our incredible city.

We ask the Henley Father to bless our staff and our departments and just be able to hope that they feel the the gratitude that our city has for each of them and the responsibilities that they carry to provide us with such an incredible place to live.

Thank you, Councilmember Newell.

Uh one other thing is thank you for those who are in attendance.

We appreciate that you're here.

Oh quickly, yes.

Sorry.

Sorry to still be under me.

Um we just thought at the beginning of the working session, just really quick.

I wanted to introduce you to our new code compliance specialist, Caden Peterson.

So anyways, just wanted to put a face with his name, and he'd be the person to reach out to now.

So we're excited to have him.

Welcome aboard, Kate.

Good to have you.

Okay, Matt, we're now ready for the good news.

The good news.

Well, fortunately, I do have a little better news than the last time we met.

I don't have a presentation, but I did want to give some updates.

Um I don't know, it's been what six weeks ago, probably.

Um I have some updates on the stored water that was discussed during that presentation.

Um I mentioned during that presentation that our stored water from Provo River Water Users Association, they had initially um put out a 50% allocation on that water.

Since then it's went to 69%.

So that's uh good piece of news.

We'll get a little bit more water out of our stored water.

Um Mayor Benz and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago is our surface water and how it was going to perform.

When I talked to Mayor Benz at breakfast a couple of weeks ago, told him it was performing worse than I thought it was going to.

But the truth of the matter is it's performing pretty erratic.

When it gets really hot, we have been able to get some flows the last couple of weeks and still getting some flows from Dry Creek right now.

And actually I thought it would be gone by now, and it's still kind of hanging in there, which is a piece of good news too.

It's not a lot, but it's uh more than I would expect it would be this time of year with what snow was up there.

So that's some good news.

Uh most importantly, we've had some timely rainstorms, which have been a huge blessing, as you guys all know.

Those rainstorms uh have been a great blessing to us, and the best part about it is the citizen response.

Um Lehigh City has really conservation effort, our citizens and what other water users have really shut off their clocks during them storms just the last couple of weeks.

Um 319 acre feet in the last two weeks of saved water because of them uh storms over the 29th and 30th.

Um April 1st to date, um the water department has delivered um 517 acre feet less than we did last year in that same time frame, and that's uh 168 million gallons.

So pretty impressive conservation effort so far.

Um hopeful that Mother Nature continues to bail us out throughout the rest of the year, but in better shape than I thought we would be when we met the last time we met.

Questions?

My only question is we continue to stay on the state two watering a week, correct?

Yes, we will stay on that.

Yep.

Yep, our intentions are to stay into phase two.

I'm I've been hopeful from the beginning that we wouldn't have to go any uh more aggressive than that and stay in stage two throughout the whole summer would be our plan to um conserve what we do have.

I just I guess one question for we get a lot of questions from residents on watering during certain times of day, but is usually the school district.

Yes.

So do you do you have like a direct POC with the school district for for when we get those uh complaints?

The school district is a lot like our own parks department.

They they water such a huge area that for them to be able to water two days a week and be able to get through all their zones.

They it's such a huge watering time frame that they and it doesn't bother us that they water off peak.

It actually kind of helps us out that some users do water off peak so that we don't see the huge peaks in our storage reservoirs.

So basically it's the same thing as uh if you've heard from our parks department.

There's such a huge area and so many zones to get through that sometimes they have to water during the day.

Okay.

Thanks.

That will help remove some stress from my because nothing makes me more stressed than a one o'clock watering of a baseball field.

Any other questions?

So do you think if you continue we continue kind of doing what we're doing, citizens doing what they're we're doing, that we'll be able to just kind of maintain?

Yep.

Yep, maintained, stick with the two-day-a week schedule.

Um obviously our messaging will continue to be to stick with that phase two watering schedule and then take advantage of the storms we do get, as we've as we have done, the citizens have done as I mentioned.

If we can take advantage of those storms, turn your sprinklers off your clocks, let them for a few days until that we've that storm and what good it did do is gone, and you need to water again, water again, but to take advantage of what Mother Nature does give us.

And do you know if you have been able to send out any notices to people who have been watering the lot significantly more than that?

We have not.

Um we we lost our code enforcement offer.

We were officer, we were building that relationship before he left.

Um I think we get we made a few phone calls and people we're we touch base with out in the field, but there hasn't been a lot and all there are a few that we know of that are not following the two-day week, but just the manpower to get out and visit those.

We haven't made any yet.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Um 2.2 library book return update.

Mr.

Boyle.

So Chrissy Seely from the library is here to answer questions about the proposal that we had a couple of months ago about phone calls to collect books for those people that might not be able to come in to the library.

And she has uh some data and information on that, how that's working, and is here to answer any questions that you have for that.

So we did um put out on social media that we had the availability for patrons to come in, they can call us, we will come out, we will either pick up what they need to return, or if they have a hold or other items that they would like to pick up, we can take that out to them.

Um surprisingly, we haven't had a lot of usage.

We've had a total of maybe a dozen.

So there hasn't been high usage.

Um, but we feel like those who have needed to use it have used it.

Um we've tried to let people know if they come in and we see that they're having a difficult time.

We've tried to let them know that that's available.

Um so that's kind of the usage of what we've had right now.

There have been a few who have been like moms with little kids, but the vast majority of those are older, like senior citizens who it's a little harder for them to get in the building.

And so they're the ones who typically use that on a regular basis.

So questions.

Um, I know that a lot of older people don't use social media.

So do you have I know we talked about there being signs and designated parking spots?

Is that like with a phone number on there or something?

There is a designated spot with a sign on the I mean I've seen the one designated spot that says 10 minutes, but I think when we talked a couple months ago, it was about about having signs kind of like a grocery pickup thing where you have a number on the spot that you can call to inform people, like I don't know, if that was I heard there was some signs that were ordered or something.

Um I haven't done anything specifically.

That would probably be something that Steve would do if they were you know, if that was planned.

But at the moment, um I guess my understanding was for a little while let's watch it and see what the need is.

And I have I just haven't seen that there's a huge need.

Um I do know that that is a challenge that those who need this information the most are not on social media.

And so, you know, we've that's why we've tried as we've seen patrons come in to let them know that that is a possibility that they can just call us and we're happy to run things out.

Um but it is a little harder to get that message out to the senior citizens in particular.

Yeah.

And even younger people.

Um has there been any um did you are there signs, Steve?

Do you know?

No, the signs.

Signs have not been ordered yet.

Okay.

Um distinctly is kind of one of those things I'm waiting for verbiage.

That's all we need to talk about.

If we if if we feel like it's really needed, then I say yeah, we could get some and we can put them up.

I just as we've watched it, I just haven't felt like there's that much need.

I mean we're we're not seeing the response from it.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that's over the last month, you say?

Yeah, month and a half, six weeks.

Okay.

Just to echo councilmember Freeman, I would support getting the signs with a number on it.

Um and maybe putting it in the newsletter when it goes out with utility bills, letting people know that this is an option.

So uh to that point, uh to be fair.

We haven't uh publicized this a lot.

Um it's mostly been as we've received requests or had calls come in uh for that, and we're happy to publicize that.

The one concern that we do have with publicizing it is that we anticipate if there is a a greater need, do we have the staff to be able to address that, right?

So I guess that's part of what we need to explore as well as that happens with the understanding that if we if we do put a sign up and start to publicize that, and we may need to hire some additional staff uh to do that.

But that's probably uh good feedback that we need to take back and implement kind of the next step in that.

So the the 12 uh that Chrissy had reported on it's mostly been people that have have come in, expressed some concerns about getting into the library or called, expressing some concerns, and we've said we're happy to come out and and and pick up those books as needed.

Um so yeah, so we can take that back and communicate that back.

That's different information than I remember because a couple months ago when we spoke about it, it was that it would take significant staffing to man a drop box, but that the library would be able to handle a couple parking spots with signs and on that door, that door.

That was my understanding of the work, working session, work session was the drop box was too prohibitive with staffing and the logistics, but that signs were okay.

Yeah.

And would be able to be manned.

So it's Yeah, and I think I think you're right.

I think that that was the direction of the conversation went when we had that meeting.

Um we have estimated Christie has some numbers here that if we were to have Dropbox, we estimate that it would probably be about an additional $60,000 a year in wages for that.

Um I think as far as the phone calls going, I think the um we're just not sure what's going to happen there.

So it could be status quo, it could be we need a couple extra pages to go out there and do that.

I think to be fair, I think uh the staff down there have been a little bit apprehensive to message that a little bit because they're they are worried about being overloaded with their work.

But um one of the other things that we've noticed is here again, getting into a new building, we had no idea of what our numbers were gonna do, and our checkout rates and everything else have of course increased dramatically.

So what we didn't, you know, at that time when it was the conversation, it was oh yeah, we can probably do this.

Now we're so busy, we're like, oh, this might be a problem.

It might be a problem if we have to have somebody right there to do that each time.

So can I ask, are you comparing your checkout rates to the warehouse um situation or when we had the other library?

Right?

Does that make sense?

What do you what is the increase to?

Um we the numbers that I've been getting um in looking back, they are significantly higher than the warehouse.

They're still higher than what we had in the old library.

So like even just we bought a whole thing of brand new library cards.

They're almost they've all almost all been given out.

We've had that many patrons coming in.

Um like 700 families come in to get library cards, and that's awesome.

Yeah, so it's great, and we love that.

It's just we're we're getting busier and busier, and we do have concerns of how we'll manage that.

So my understanding is that library usage for a lot of kids and families goes up in the summer.

So I don't know.

Hopefully, we're comparing to last June or last May.

You know what I mean?

Like not comparing to February or whatever, because that makes a difference, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other questions?

So just to uh summarize if there's no other questions, is uh we'll go back.

Uh we'll work on getting some signage with a phone number and maybe push that out through our social media and uh newsletter and then continue to track and see what kind of uh usage we get.

Yeah.

Well, and and it makes me wonder we have two checkout desks.

I mean, we can three checkout desks.

We have three checkout desks.

I didn't know that.

Um I know this is pre-planned, but there's probably creative ways to consolidate that and to use utilize staff in different ways.

So yeah.

I know that other libraries have two stories and somehow do it.

So I don't know.

Yeah, we'll look at we'll look at and see what we we can do for that.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, item 2.3 discussion of nice healthcare service renewal agreement.

Mr.

Randy.

All right.

Check our things.

Um before the end of the pick.

All right, are you able to see that?

No.

There we go.

All right.

So David is out of town and asked me to come, so thank you for making time for me, Mayor and Council.

Um, yeah, this is just a discussion about nice health care.

Um, it is on the agenda tomorrow as part of the consent agenda.

So chance to kind of go over what nice health care is.

I did get some questions today from Councilmember Freeman, so hopefully we can cover all of those, and if we have additional questions, love to talk about those.

So, really briefly, nice health care.

A way to think about it is that it is a direct primary care service.

The idea is like if you had an on-site clinic where you could go and get your primary care needs taken care of.

However, instead of just one brick and mortar facility, they're able to visit you here at work.

If you have any here, they can visit you at your home.

They can do telemedicine, so if you have virtual call or something, that's better for you.

But beyond just kind of what you might think of as normal telemedicine care, they um are able to provide things like we've had um employees get an x-ray in their office.

Um they can do an EKG in your living room if you need to get that.

They offer mental health therapy services.

And then they have prescription medications.

They're able to provide a large list of medications for free for those that qualify.

And then there's also a list of discounted medications.

So from our first quarter, we don't have quarter two stats yet.

So this is looking January to March.

This is a little overview of what employees have used so far with NICE Healthcare.

So we had 126 visits, so this is covering all the different services.

So whether it's whether it's physical therapy or mental health service.

This is the savings to employees.

This is not the savings to the city.

There are, of course, savings to the city.

Those can be calculated in a couple of ways.

And then additionally, any services that go through NICE Healthcare do not hit our plan.

So they're savings that way as well.

And then just a little bit about what Lehigh City employees think about their service with nice nice health care.

A little over 97% thought that it was explained to them simply in a way that they understood.

A little over 90%, 97%, excuse me, said they felt listened to and then just shy of 95% felt that their care was better than when they had last gone to a clinic.

Just real quickly then what the contract is for that you'll be seeing tomorrow.

It's $45 per employee per month.

This is already factored into the budget.

This is something the finance department's aware of, so that that has been included there.

We're looking at a two-year contract.

If for whatever reason the council in a year from now is not interested in renewing that contract, we have a 60 days notice that we need to give them, and we can still end that contract with them.

And like I mentioned, this is on the consent agenda for tomorrow.

What questions do you have about nice health care or the contract?

So it says that you said we save 1.2% on premium.

So can you give me a dollar amount for that, please?

Yes, so that's about $83,000.

Okay.

So we spent, so it's $83,000 of savings, and this costs $243,000.

So the cost is $45 per employee per month.

Last year, that was about 179.

That savings though that you just mentioned is only the savings of the premium.

So that's not including, it's not factoring in savings that would come by not hitting the plan.

We don't exactly have a way to estimate that because we don't know what the services were provided necessarily and what that would have cost if it had hit our plan.

Yeah, but it's the savings to this to the city, the organization, not I'm not saying to the you know what I mean.

I'm saying that's the city or the organization.

That's what I'm saying.

That's also what I'm saying.

Right.

So we have we have two ways of getting savings through using nice health care.

The first is the premium reduction, which is that 1.2%.

And then also just because employees are using nice health care, it's not hitting our plan, so that our premiums aren't being raised because it's not hitting the plan.

Does that make sense?

No.

So does the insurance PEHP we have, does that provide telehealth care?

They do provide a telehealth um option.

It does not offer all these other things, so it doesn't offer x-rays, prescriptions, mental health therapy, any of those types of things.

It's a very basic sore throat telehealth kind of situation, if that makes sense.

And is that um does Lehigh City have to use PHP?

Is that like a the government entity has to use that?

We don't have to.

We've gone out for bid when we have bids, and that's been our selected provider based on cost and services.

Question mark.

Um, so as we've been using this, have you noticed or do we have like data over time?

How employees have increased usage they're being sorry, my phone's going off.

Um I guess just being able to help employees understand the program.

I know that like wouldn't um it was available even though you weren't on health care.

I was using it, but trying to find it as more of a immediate care was a little bit more difficult to like get things scheduled and trying to navigate it, but things that we can do to make sure then the employees are being able to utilize it more and get help.

So I was just wondering data on that, what you've seen.

Sure, yeah.

So our utilization has gone up a year.

So this again, I'm looking up quarter one, quarter one of 2024.

Um we went up about four percent in terms of usage.

Um so certainly we can do more.

We can try and you know get better education, help people to know more about it in our marketing and things like that, but we are seeing an increase in usage.

Okay.

So this sounds like it's uh from what I hear, it's more than telehealth.

It's more of a concierge really medical.

Yes.

Okay.

Any other questions, Randy?

Andy, thank you very much.

I appreciate your time.

Okay, item 2.4.

Uh parks funding and priorities discussion.

Mr.

Marchbanks.

Yeah, right.

That's hard enough to do with one hand.

Or two hands.

All right.

Well, thanks for having me today.

Um so this is kind of a heavy conversation, and I apologize.

I've tried to organize it the best I can.

And if you have any questions in between, let me know.

If I'm not sure, I've got Trent and Sean here with me as well today that they can help me talk and figure it out.

Um, what I wanted to talk about is what we have and what we're getting.

Um how we're gonna do it, there's a couple different solutions to that, and that's gonna be a bigger, deeper conversation that we're gonna have to have as we go.

So currently, right now, if you look at our park master plan, um, these are the things that is that we have listed in that.

This is outdated as of a year ago.

We've added about 40 to 50 acres since then.

So we have 52 developed developed parks, 413 acres.

That 413 acres is actual park space acres.

That's not our open space acreage.

So uh eight baseball fields, four practice fields that aren't reservable, markable, anything like that, basically backstop out in the middle of a piece of grass.

24 soccer fields, seven tennis courts, thirteen pickleball uh courts, two disc golf courses, one skate park, two splash pads, three if you count the legacy centers, um, open splash pad area as well.

Four fishing sites, that's not including Dry Creek Lake at this point.

Uh 30 restrooms, park restrooms, two dog parks, seven horseshoe pits, twenty-four reservable pavilions, and sixteen um trailhead points or access points onto our trail systems.

We have a pretty robust system as it sits currently.

Um but when we talk about that, we still have area plans that aren't completed that we have areas in town that are still working on different areas and lessons learned that we've done in the last few years of how our impact fees work and what we can and cannot do with them.

So this high-level slide just kind of tells you what our commitment is on our impact fees towards those area plans that we have.

Uh the last one, that River Point, is not an area plan, it's just as uh development out kind of in the Holebrook area out in Edge Homes area.

But Holebrook Farms area has a hundred percent of the impact fees that they generate goes back to Holbrook Farms area.

Um Traverse Mountain has an 80-20 split with the city.

Uh and realistically, it's more it's closer to uh 95-5 just due to the fact of rising costs and how we've had to what we've had to do with our parks to be able to make them actual parks up there.

Um the impact fees at the time of the area plan uh were such that they were different and the wish list or the requirements on that area plan are so high that we've agreed to that that 80% doesn't cover it.

Um so we are spending more money up there.

Cold Springs, uh, though that area plan on our end of things is taken care of as far as the park open space um is done, we still spend a hundred thousand or a hundred percent of the impact fees that we generated from that to that area.

In addition, we have to go back and do more work out there.

So that will be plus uh whatever we have to do in the open spaces that at some point.

River Point, on the other hand.

We work with the developer up front due to these other situations that we've been in.

And we came up with a matching participation on that.

So we'll put in a matching amount, they'll put in a matching amount, and we'll have a great park because of it.

They were good to work with and able to do that.

So that one worked well for us.

I'm sure you so currently, what does it take to build a park?

So right now we're anywhere from $7 a square foot to $10 a square foot.

So that's $448,000 an acre if we go on our high end.

As of late, as the bids come in, that's closer to what we're spending.

Frankly, if we go much below that, we're talking about just grass space.

That's not good for anybody.

That's very, very easy to maintain.

But as far as the usage, as far as maturity slides, anything, it's not a usable piece of ground other than just open space.

And then we have other issues come above from that as well.

Impact fees.

So as you all know, impact fees, what can they be used on?

Anything of note that has that has been noted in our either area plans, master plan.

And I'm kind of looking to dean up this because this is changing a little bit.

This is what I know.

So hopefully I'm telling you right, and you can yell at me if I'm if I'm wrong.

But they have to be on our plan to be able to build and be qualified for park impact fees.

So they can be used to expand areas, they can be used for new construction as long as it's a substantial or substantial project that will last at least 10 years.

It can't be just something that we're gonna go put in for a couple years, demo out, and then redo.

So, you know, expansions of playgrounds, parks, open space, uh new restrooms, sports complex, shelters, lighting systems, that type of thing is all quite qualifiable with our impact fees.

Um it can't be used for maintenance, it can't be used for staffing, it can't be used for general practices, general operations, fertilizer, things of that nature.

Those are things that we can't use it for.

Um part of the problem that we keep seeing is we have our impact fees and they're already dedicated to areas, and so when it comes to our regional parks that we have, um we can't count on those as funding mechanisms because basically it'll never be built up full enough without being spent on the trigger points that are coming up to be able to use them.

Um there's just not enough leeway in between the two of them from what we're spending on the park to be able to make it work to be able to save any money to do anything of any sort of substantial park.

And so that is a that is a challenge that we keep facing.

So our current park system, this is kind of our current park system.

What I've got on these next few slides is our upcoming.

What do we have to look forward to?

What do we have to staff for and demand for the next upcoming future?

Um is a 27-acre park that should have been built this year.

We entered into an agreement with the construction of 2100 north that we let them stage on that ground and they're building us a trail system to go through it as well.

And so that the park won't be under construction until 2029.

Um we had plans, they worked out great.

We changed them a little bit when we had a bridge come in, so we'll have to go back and re-replan that a little bit.

But uh in 2029, we we need to be ready to do that.

The trigger points for the area have already been met, so we do need to work on that one.

Holebrook uh three was a small access into a trail system.

Um the HOA had a piece of property next to it, it was about a third of an acre if I'm remembering right, piece of ground.

Uh we worked with them and said, give us the access, we'll give you the park.

And so the Holebrook HOA is taking care of that.

That's not on our system anymore.

So that one's gone.

Inverness trail system.

So most of the open space that the city will obtain up in Inverness is all uh that mass uh open space.

Um we will have a massive trail system going through there, uh, which you guys have seen in the budget this year, that 1.5 that will be spent through the next probably three to five years to be able to get that trail system up and operational.

But that will add another 600 acres.

So we'll have about 1,500 acres of open space up on the mountain that will be in that easement.

Perry Homes still owes us about an acre of property due to development up there in that same area.

West Canyon, we're supposed to have a five-acre park.

Again, that is only if the houses go in that that will happen.

Shadow Ridge Phase 2, that's currently under construction.

It'll actually construction will start in about two weeks.

No, it's just a 10-acre piece of property.

But that'll be the last four acres that we'll develop.

We've worked with the water department.

They've got their main line that goes through there raised up so that we can finish that piece of property.

East Canyon, which is what we're calling Lake View, we are developing 13 acres of that piece of property up there.

The rest will still stay native.

We brought that to you two weeks ago and had you approve the contract on that for development.

And then River Point out in the Edge Homes area out by Holbrook's.

So Jordan Willows is not new by any means, but it's that it's the open space that we have down in Jordan Willows subdivision.

So with our high level master plan that we want to do for that, we'll be able to start funding and figuring out how we are going to improve that area and not just have a few walk paths that are dilapidating.

And then we go to the general area.

We have Cold Spring Ranch, Latson Mountain Cold Springs that I keep talking about that needs major upgrades.

Dragonfly, we have 42 acres down there.

Currently, right now we're waiting on signage.

So if we do have emergency issues, we're not confusing our emergency responders.

We're working with the Metro District Metro District right now, trying to figure out what name can be on that so that make sure that they're okay with it.

And then so this is just all of them.

This is everything that we've got coming online.

So if we talk about just open park space, what are we going to do?

We've got 250 acres coming online.

If we talk about our open space, it's 600 plus acres.

Currently, right now, our staff is working at about 35 acres per FTE.

The standard or the best practices is about 20 acres per FTE.

Some of these big parks that we're talking about are sports parks.

That means that it's closer to about 15 acres per FTE, unless we change our practices and do something different, which we've I've alluded to doing things on that as well.

So I guess the bigger question is is how do we get this funded?

How do how are we going to take the small bite out of this apple to keep going?

Because we're kind of to the point right now that building new parks, we're they're not turning out great because we can't maintain them.

And that's and that's a hard solution.

I mean, we've got a we are getting fun, or we are, you know, it's proposed that we get three people this year.

This is going to be the same topic that we have for the next several years due to the fact that the amount of acreage that we keep bringing on.

None of these parks that you see here are talking about new subdivisions when we have a three-acre piece of property that's handed to us due to open space requirements when a new development comes in.

Um like I said, last year we got 65 acres just between everything that we did.

So as a as a department, we keep coming up with different we're we keep trying to find the better solution.

How do we do this?

You know, we put ourselves on a uh smart controller system so that it's on our phone so we can take care of it so we can operate so we can do.

But a lot of the things that we do, um we've well and we also mow outsource all of our mowing.

If we out or if we didn't outsource our mowing, that's another additional eight FTEs that we'd have to have right now.

And instead of the $800,000 that we're paying for that, we're we're doing it with $200,000 a year through an uh external service.

Um 250-ish somewhere in there.

So these are these are the things that that we have coming up.

Um what am I missing?

What questions do you have for me?

Um when we met a few um my gosh, maybe two months ago at the parks building, and we um talked about them.

We gave them numbers.

My memory is that we were talking about a hundred million dollars of uh to develop these new parks.

Is that still accurate?

So estimating what we do down, in fact we were flirting with the idea of doing all turf down at Miller Roads.

If we to were to do a baseball complex out of all turf, the outfields, the infields, all of it.

We got a bid back close to 47 million dollars.

Um I believe we can do it cheaper than that just due to the fact that don't think that all turf is uh necessarily the way we want to go or the right way to do it.

But that's a pretty close.

I mean, if we were to do that, that would decrease our manpower dramatically.

We could probably operate that site with the manpower that we currently have on our baseball side of things on our open sports fields.

Um if we were to upgrade all of our fields that way, not just that one, but then go and put in field and in the other two.

So yeah, I'm gonna say that's pretty close, pretty accurate to what we're going to do.

And just to be clear, if you could go back, I think a slide or two.

Yeah.

Um, Winnie, you're talking about these ones.

Yep.

And then I know there was a couple other when we had met that we talked about, but the sum total of our park development needs, not for FTEs, but just to develop the parks, is around 100 million.

Yeah, I was with or without the turf, without the turf, I guess.

Correct.

And then with turf it's one.

That had some upgrades in it that had new lighting for our sports fields that had some of those things.

Yeah.

So our priority list is basically Miller Roads, we we want to get that done.

We created an ISOR down there.

We're trying diligently to get that actively taken care of.

It's a hard uh that one's a hard one because you know, we took a piece of open ground under the assumption that we would be building soon and brought in dirt.

Now we have dirt there and no real funding.

And so it's a hard, you know.

I hate screwing up nature to wait.

But it did save us a dramatic amount of money.

Um, so it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just the long-term care and what does it look like.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.

Mayor, if I can.

Um for Jordan, I think it's supposed to be on this slide.

Are you talking about Jordan Willows?

Are you talking about Willow Park?

No, Jordan Willis.

Well, a park's not on here.

Okay.

I mean, it's a developed park, it needs upgrades in every sense of the word, but yeah, it's not it's not up and coming.

We already have it, so I didn't include much of what we have that way.

Okay.

Um please ask because I was gonna talk about Willow Park, just because uh, you know, I think we all agree that there's we can do something there.

Uh-huh.

Um of course the county maintained it at one point.

We took it over, of course.

And then but but I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out the best strategy.

Do we do we talk with the county because we we have the burden of maintaining it, right?

But it's not fully ours.

It's it's least, and there's some restrictions and what we can do with it with that land, right?

It has to my understanding, and Jason, correct me if I'm wrong.

Um it needs to benefit the county, not just Lehigh residence, right?

Correct.

It has to be a benefit to the the community, basically, the surrounding communities.

Yeah.

So yes.

Um I guess I'm just I'm just curious if we should we talk with the county, see what options they're comfortable with.

Because I I feel like if we're maintaining it for the next hundred years and we're spending all the money into it, I think we should have a little bit more control over what we can do with that land.

So I'm not I'm just kind of spitballing.

But or or maybe we come up with something where they actually participate more in the development of the case.

I really like the option.

So I've never gone to the county and said, hey, we'd like to do this, and they'd say, oh no, no, yeah, that's not happening yet.

I mean, we've added dog park, we've added our shop, we've added a bunch of things down there.

Um we have a thousand trees down there when we started, we had 860 even after us taking down all of the trees were increasing.

Um, if there is an option that we want to come up with, uh my suggestion would be we go and talk to them about buying it outright and and being done with the county side of it.

Uh that was part of the agreement that they could have use of the land.

Well, it's like everything else.

If the county needed somewhere to park a dump truck, we're not going to tell them no.

I mean, we're we we would hope they would treat us the same way, you know, it's kind of that that portion.

And so I think that there's an opportunity if if those things arise that we should I mean I I never see I never see us not wanting that as an open space.

The usage of it, I totally agree.

It needs to be something.

Yeah.

And I I guess for the reason why it wasn't just transferred to the city for because right now it's under a lease.

Was that just a cost effective way to do it?

Or they they just didn't want to relinquish the right at the time.

They just wanted to have options just like we did.

Um they knew it needed to be upgraded.

I was I was in a lot of those conversations.

And again, that was a different commission, right?

Yeah.

This commission may have different priorities or different thoughts on the matter, but yeah, at the time that's that's what they felt.

Okay.

So I mean, I I think that's a very possible option that we could look at and see what we wanted to do if there's the something arises.

Yeah, and I guess I guess this the sequence of events would be first we need to figure out what we want to do with it.

Very much.

And anything that kind of falls outside of the agreement, that lease agreement with the county, we can either say, hey, are you guys okay with us doing this and amending the lease, or if not, yeah, then we could how do we how do we make this work for everybody?

Right.

And I think honestly, in the conversations that I've had, that's that's kind of how I feel they would participate is saying, yeah, let's figure out a way to do it.

There they've been very good to work with on anything we do down there so far.

Okay.

Thanks, Steve.

As far as the um calculations of your 35 acres for FTE, is that including the open space or no?

No.

That is not that is not our open space, and really trails is not included in that, but I do have an FTE added onto ours.

So our trail systems, that's a very hard one to maintain how far, because trails are done in feet, linear feet instead of mileage or acreage.

Um so we have one trails employee currently that's tallied onto our 36 acres, but the trails is not tallied onto that 460 that we currently maintain.

And the TMTA, they're pretty active group helping with the trails, are they?

Yes, but they have their own they they want it to be a very high functioning woodside, like park city type course.

Okay.

Um we're trying very hard to pull it back and make sure it's still a recreation course.

Um they are very active in it.

Um they do a great job on it, but we we have to keep a very tight close on to what happens with that.

Will you be using them as a partner to develop the Inverness trade?

Yeah, we okay.

Yes.

We have people go to every one of their meetings and I think they are part of the master plan, aren't they, Trent?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so you said that your priority with all these, basically.

Some of them are impact fees, so it's just we have to do it.

But the optional-ish ones would be Miller Roads.

Miller Roads to me is our biggest need, frankly.

Um whether what we do with it I guess I can go into to what our department thinks should be done first.

Um maybe that would I I should have added that slide.

I really didn't want to get that far down into it due to the fact that I I want you guys aware of what we've got coming up.

And and frankly, this is to me, this scares me to death to think that I'm getting another third of what we already have and we are struggling like we are.

Um this could happen as soon as five years, depending on growth.

You're talking about all of the impact fees.

Okay.

Um not our regional parks.

Until we can fund those, I can't say when that'll happen.

But but frankly, if I go back to this slide here, um that very well could be within five years.

And so I look at that and go that if I had this tomorrow, there's no way I could do this.

Uh our we wouldn't frankly be able to visit the parks once every other week.

So you look at it that way, and that's undoable.

And can you tell me the difference here?

I remember you we had a conversation where you were talking about the difference in how we high used to do parks and how you do it now, whereas like a developer would say, here's just like some land, like for some sort of thing versus now.

So our we really like to have the developer involved in the building of parks.

Um more because that they're already on site with material with graders, with excavators, all of the infrastructure type things.

And so in the back end, it saves us a lot of money, or in the front end, it saves us a lot of money.

What started happening is they would get big eyes and say, Oh, we're gonna do all of this, and then come and sell that to the council and to planning commission and everybody and say, hey, by the way, look, this is what us in the city are going to do, and then come on the back end of that and say, okay, well, we've done our portion, where's the rest?

And their portion was using the impact fees that we had or that they had generated through the houses.

And we're sitting here going, okay, how do we have rest?

What are you talking about?

The parks doesn't make money, you guys all know that.

And so how are we building without the impact fees?

And you know, or should we be putting 100%?

And that's kind of that follow.

That's do we do 100% in all area plans?

Do we not?

And I know there's a lot of state code and questions and laws and everything that keep flirting with it.

Um, but realistically, we've never done that.

We've never sectionalized our impact fees until these area plans started happening, and then it happened for us.

We ran out completely of impact fees.

All of our other projects kind of went on a back burner.

And so that's that's why we went back to okay, yeah, we don't necessarily want to see what you are proposing at all.

We're gonna take the burden on us of developing designing all of it.

If you want to have a seat at the table, come talk to us, we'd love to have you.

But we want to be able to control those budgets as they go out, not have them control it and then us pay for it on the back end.

Because basically, you have a development that advertises they're gonna have this entity, this amenity, and then there's just an empty piece of land that's undeveloped.

At least that's what happened in my neighborhood.

That's what happened in several places in the city.

Yes, that we thought that someone I hadn't lived there long enough, and someone's like, this was supposed to be a park.

And we just yeah.

Yeah, and and that's what's happening.

That's happened several places throughout town, and that's been a very hard battle for us is how do we make it so that we're not the bad guys in the situation because we didn't promise it, frankly.

It's not our area plan.

We agree to it, but we don't develop it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Any other questions for me?

I have some questions.

Can you be okay?

Yep.

Okay.

Um you clarify, I maybe I missed it, but did you say that it's less expensive to contract out for mowing than to have it, or is it more expensive in-house or contracting for volume?

It's very less expensive to contract it out.

Um there will be a day that we'll look at it and it'll probably even out where we have so much acreage, but we're not at that point yet.

So I estimate it would be about $800,000 for us to mow internally.

Uh and that's just staffing, that's not equipment.

We're talking probably two hundred thousand dollar lawn mowers and two or three twenty thousand dollar lawnmowers to boot plus the trucks.

Um day the the numbers will catch up to each other, but we're not there yet.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Um then just to help you understand that your biggest concern is is it the one-time money to get some of these parts built aside from fellows?

Um, or is it the ongoing cost for staffing to maintain the parks, or is it simple?

It's both.

Frankly, it's both.

Right now, uh honestly, if I could not build another park for until I could get reassured that we're gonna have people here, I'd do that.

Okay, but your consumer is that with the impact fees that we have to get some of these parks built in that five years, is that case we'll have to have the staff with those?

Yes.

So realistically, we have trigger points on all of our impact fee monies so far that we have to build when they have certain amount of people in the area.

Um and Holebrooks has reached that uh Triumph Park keeps reaching new levels, and I think we only have three left up there.

Um anyway, yeah, they keep reaching those those development triggers that we have to be able to supply that as part of our agreements with them.

Um so I know area plans, there's probably not much we could do about that.

But then like you mentioned, we're getting uh density bonus um for open space.

Have we and could we turn those over to HY instead of having to see um maintain those?

Um I am actively working currently on getting some of that taken care of or starting that process.

Um I think that we can for the most part.

The issue the issue that we would face is if we were trying to turn over larger pieces to HOAs, it's still required to open space.

I'm not positive if legally we have to own it or if they do.

So that's something that we'll have to look at and work out.

Um but we're already flirting with the idea of some of these areas that we don't necessarily use that only benefit HOA areas, uh going to the HOA and basically not doing maintenance or telling them, you know, well, frankly, we will do the bare minimum and the ground to be ours, and you or you guys can take it and then at that point do what you want with it.

Uh maintain it, make it as pretty as you want.

So that that is something I'm actively working on.

We've got letters being drafted currently to be able to start going out to some of those areas.

Okay.

Um and have you looked at underutilized parts and another time in my house.

I have like five parks I can walk to.

And one of you ever see anybody there.

So is it you know worth the the cost of maintaining it and replacing equipment and that have you have you looked at that kind of detail?

So we actually just went into a contract with the tracking agency that can tell us what our usage is.

Um that is new as of about a week ago um that we can actually get the data.

I would hate to be able or I would hate to go and say I don't hardly ever see anybody there just off of um visual or word of mouth, and then come on the back end and get beat up.

So we uh we do we will start having that capability.

We're getting trained on it currently, so this is something that we can approach probably early next year now that we're in the summer months, uh maybe even get historical data on it.

But yeah, nothing nothing currently that I would feel comfortable with jumping that ship on yet.

But you're looking at that sounds like a good way to approach that.

Yeah.

Um so I wonder, I don't know if we have those data available right now, but um with the the parks we're obligated to, especially with impact fees.

Can you give us a number of how many uh more staff uh park employees you're looking at meetings so we can kind of next few years out?

I can spitball it, but it's not gonna be close.

And and frankly, that's really hard because I think that we need to create our own standard.

I can tell you right now, we don't operate within mine or my staff standard.

Um that and that's a very, very hard thing to do.

When you go to work every day and you're just kind of going, okay, well, I almost almost got what I wanted to do done.

That's that stinks.

Nobody wants that.

Um but just spitballing, I would say we need at least.

Per year.

No, total for all the.

Yeah, that would be within the next five-ish years.

Five-ish years.

In addition to the three this year, right?

In addition to the three this year.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm not counting those.

Those are helping make up.

Am I crazy?

Yes, was that answer.

Yes, was that answer?

Double that.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

What do you guys think?

Get up here at seven.

Yeah, that's why I brought you.

I think I think you're right when you go to full-time employees, but then they're gonna have additional C sorts of it.

Oh, there you go.

Then it's about a third.

Yeah, so so he's he's absolutely right.

He's bringing up the fact that yes, that is to run a crew.

That is to have a guy that's driving the truck, but then you talk about seasonal employees when they're you know, mid season, picking up garbage, doing actually the the harder stuff, well, not harder stuff, but the less technical part of it.

Because that ratio is about two to two to one.

So then we talk about another um what, fourteen, yeah, fourteen part-time FTEs.

So yeah.

And I guess Michelle said something that kind of triggered something I've been meaning to ask you.

And and you may not might not have the answers now, but just as far as what we can do to to outsource like certain areas.

So I'm going to baseball games several times a week for my son over at Vets Park, and I always go and get a Coke or something from this um concession stand.

But I I'm just wondering, you know, are there areas not only within parks, but even with facilities or maintenance or janitorial work?

Like where can we maybe offload some of that?

I mean, even like I'm thinking baseball, like what if we had got food trucks there, or if we had someone come in, would that be cheaper?

You know, we've been pretty diligent on on checking those things periodically.

Um like our buildings janitorial.

I uh I would love not to have to hire people for janitorial.

That is a hard job to fill.

We're always hiring.

Um we do it so much cheaper.

We buy the product cheaper, we clean cheaper, we do it, and it's a higher quality.

Uh we we outsourced a couple of our buildings for a few years and had nothing but complaints from not only staff and residents.

I mean, it it got it got to the point that it's bad.

And you spend almost as much time chasing the management of that or the the contracts as you do as you as hiring.

And so I feel like we're pretty pretty diligent on what we do that way.

Um I would say, you know, two years ago we kind of come into a crunch and we couldn't hire seasonal staff down at the ballpark to do the the concessions.

Uh we brought in a couple different food trucks.

The problem is is we're not set up to where they can use our buildings under their licensing.

And so it's hard to unless we rent the space to them, and then that kind of ties our hands for events.

Um I really can't say enough about looking into putting turf in our infield.

I really think that that is kind of the low-hanging fruit force at this point.

It's gonna cost us a couple million dollars, but it's gonna save our staff time to the point where I think that we're gonna be able to get a lot more done or at least spread out a little bit more.

Um we're talking eighty hours a day, or how many guys?

Four guys for six hours for ballparks?

Four guys six hours a day, seven six days a week.

Uh prepping fields.

I mean, we're talking prepping in between games at state tournaments.

We're talking um, and I think that that brings in a revenue source as well because there's no rainouts.

If we want to play on them six, seven days a week, we can play on them six, seven days a week.

The only thing that we're gonna have to do is maintain when they tear it and patch it and make sure it's level.

And I mean, there are still things that we're gonna have to take care of, but it's not it's not the staffing issues that we're facing.

Um I don't think it's worth putting it out in the outfields.

I think that the waters I mean it's expensive and it's a very valuable resource.

It's just not fiscally responsible to go put it out there.

Uh it's gonna cost us millions if we do that instead of a couple million.

It's gonna be tens to fifteens.

Um that that's something that could really stretch our manpower is to be able to do that and and upgrading some of our infrastructure, such as our lighting down there in some of those areas.

Um we're we have tried very hard in the last few years to make sure that things are full year use.

You'll you'll hear another presentation coming up about another option that we may have up at family park for winter use through a third party.

Um things of that nature that could potentially bring in revenue to help uh increase and an upgrade and some of those things.

And so it's something that our staff is is very passionate about is doing things the best we can, but also not spending money where it doesn't need to be spent.

So yeah, and and the difference between I mean you think about the turf, yeah, it's a big one-time expense, but it's it's more of a capital expense, and I th I it feels like going through this budget season, we have it's a little bit easier to find those one-time capital expenditures.

We have the park tax, right?

It's the ongoing costs that are killing us with with full-time employees or even seasonal.

So any other questions for me.

So can you tell how what are the highest maintenance tape parks and the lowest maintenance?

So that's a hard one.

Realistically, our highest maintenance parks are our sports parks, our sports fields.

Anything that has to do with with uh organized sports on it, that's what we classify that as.

So it's Olympic Park and Vets Park and Sports Park and North Lake and Family Park.

Then from there we go into our leisure park systems.

Our leisure parks are probably the second on that.

But I'm gonna say our regional parks, our sports parks are our highest.

So family park is number one, if not two, and that competes very closely with our sports parks.

Um but if you're talking about what kind of like park it is, turf is the easiest thing in the whole world to maintain.

You go plant it, you water it, you throw water on it, and you walk away.

The minute you start adding trees and you start land adding walk paths and you start adding plants and pretty things and the things that everybody wants, that's when the zero escape, it kills us.

Um maintenance-wise, it is a nightmare because you were always there pulling weeds, putting applying chemical to kill them.

Um our water is extremely dirty.

We change filters in some of our parks every day after or every cycle, excuse me.

Um when it gets really bad and we're sucking from the bottom of the ponds when we are in this type of situation.

Uh we can't get through a watering cycle.

And that's when you'll see us have these big donuts in the middle of it where there's a nice pretty green strip and nothing else.

Um I don't know, I hope I answered.

Turf is the easiest thing to maintain and the cheapest.

Okay.

By far.

Yeah, that's my understanding.

So it sounds like you're talking about baseball is kind of probably the highest maintenance of uh baseball and family parks killing us.

Anything with the splash pad.

Okay.

Those are those are crazy.

Yeah, because people put a takes a lot of high use.

Yeah.

And then what about cost-wise?

Would you say highest cost?

Um to build or to maintain.

To build it is also those.

Your biggest price tag's gonna be on anything that's you know, a regional draw or sports draw.

Um then from there it goes to just your neighborhood park.

Okay.

Okay.

And then for water usage, we kind of talked about that a little bit, but um did I understand correctly that the parks didn't turn on any water until May 15th this year?

No.

No.

No.

They didn't.

Or would they they did they did not turn on water until May 15th?

We did not turn on water until May 15th.

We did not want to testing water until May 15th.

Okay.

Yeah, I just want uh to be like public because pe residents were sending me pictures of parks and I and but I think that the city did a great job of trying to be responsible examples and stewards of it.

And yeah.

We we worked very closely uh with Matt and the water department.

Um frankly, if there's not water to be had, I mean I want to I want to go get a drink when I want one.

I I hope everybody else feels that way.

I don't want to have to uh you know I'm very passionate about about the parks, but if it's dry, it's dry, and I'd rather be able to go get a glass of water.

So thank you.

Oh, I thought Matt was the door.

Yeah.

Is there any possibility there might be some grants out there to help pay for acquisition shirt on the baseball fields?

I know we looked in the county a lot in the tourism tax.

I don't know if that would be the tourism tax, we we utilize that every year.

Um that one's a that's one that we we already have plans for the next couple of years on that.

Uh Trent has saved us, I want to say close to two million dollars on projects with grants.

Um I'm sure I can ask him and ask O's team to help look for some and see if that's a possibility to tell you yes, I don't know that off the top of my head.

Wouldn't surprise me though.

Any other questions for Steve?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Our final item.

Item 2.5, the fiscal year two 2026 to 2027 budget discussion.

Before we get too far down this road reminder, we've we have been through this.

I don't know that this one we want to necessarily uncover the whole thing.

Is there some questions, however, though, with the council that need to be discussed before this becomes an item tomorrow?

It looks like there have been a few changes.

I just have one.

Well, I have a couple questions, but it looks like a lot of kind of shifting of stuff.

Can someone explain to me the fund balance reappropriation being higher in this budget than on the last one?

I'm kind of what that means.

It's on page eight.

And compared to the last budget, it was on page 13.

Or the original, the original budget, I should say.

On page 13?

It's on page E of this current budget.

It was on page 13 of the original budget, the OG budget.

Like where it just says fund balance appropriation.

Yeah, can you explain that?

Those are basically one-time expenditures.

So if we're using fund balance to do things like I'm gonna just set it to have higher one-time expenditures.

Yeah.

So things like the legacy center study we talked about, things that aren't ongoing expenses.

Okay.

So the budget really balances, except for those things we're using fund balance to pay for because they we won't have those expenses next year.

Okay.

Um mayor, if I may.

Um so Dean, you've been a great partner throughout this whole process.

Um I know, you know, this is out of the six of us, four of us, this is our first time going through the budget cycle.

Um so I have a couple ideas of you know, looking forward to next year how we would tweak it or change the timelines a little bit.

But before I go into that, I'd love to hear from you if you have any um ideas or suggestions about how we could make it uh more efficient, more effective next year, um, knowing how engaged this council has been the last couple months.

So I'll just you know, and I've thought this a few times, and obviously it's not all my call, right?

Like I'm not over the budget.

I we put it together, we account for it, but the budget's really put together by the city and under the direction of the mayor and everything else.

I guess my only comment with all due respect, it seemed like when I try to put a budget together, I like to start from the top and work my way down, if you will.

In other words, we had a lot of discussions on various things, tax increase, no tax increase, pay plan, all that stuff.

Like that seems like where we should start.

Does that make sense?

Like if we start on those things a lot that helps me and Alice and Karma to put together the details of it.

If we start in the line items and say, what's this, you know, and it's never wrong to ask a question on what's in a line item.

I'm not saying that, but when we're just doing different things in little pieces, it almost feels like we're starting it from the bottom and working our way up, if that makes sense.

So that makes perfect sense.

And I think part of it was just us understanding.

Um, and it's interesting too.

We've had like this is you know, I've been doing this quite a while with a lot of different councils.

And a lot of times you're adding one or two people at a time, and this time we had four out of the six were new, and even the two that were here before have only been here a couple of years.

And so and it's like a lot of times you you're doing things the same way for a long time and it just rolls forward and it it's not a bad idea to look at things doing it in a little different way.

But this is just a year where we had a lot of new people, and it was just it felt like a lot of things were coming in all directions.

So I guess that's my only thought is if we started with the high-level things first and got those settled, I think it makes the putting it together easier.

Yeah.

Um I think just as I've thought through this thinking through to this next budget cycle, which we'll have a little bit of a break um between June and the end of the year.

But um I think what you said is 100% correct.

I think you know, the tax, the tax increase question was I think changed everything.

And it was kind of mid-course.

Um but I think if if the council's open to it, I think it would be good to start some of these discussions in November and December.

And I know that's during the audit time, so we would keep it lighter on the the finance side.

And I think personally, I think it would be good for the council at least to come to some priority consensus.

Maybe not perfect consensus, but just something where we can get together and say, okay, are we doing a tax increase or we not?

Are we um what are some of the departments that were prioritizing this year that maybe didn't get as much last year?

And are we going for wages or are we going for more head count in those departments?

Things like that, just to kind of maybe even have work sessions late in the year, and even during an election year, you could involve the council elect or mayor elect folks that in that discussion, right?

Just keeping it fairly uh informal, no decisions made yet, nothing in the weeds with line items to that point.

And then but you know, it it would be good to talk about ongoing expenses and those priorities, uh, capital projects, the park tax, like kind of just getting some consensus.

And I know we we didn't even take office until early January, so it was hard to do that before.

Yeah, there are some of those capital things if you think about it that are a lot less maybe controversial or maybe just like we have X amount of dollars, how are we going to spend it?

It's not a matter of lots of different variables coming into it.

Yeah, and that's I think I think having having you know the the five of us up here understanding and and having our parties out there on the table, by the time we hit January, it's gonna be fairly smooth.

And I would love to have the the budget retreat maybe in early um January and just having you know two or three days of of really digging deep and setting the priorities um more formally for for you, Dean, and for Jason and the mayor, and as you um start to consider the the tentative budget.

Um I I think uh I think there's kind of three categories I I look at in the budget.

It's kind of the year over year changes.

I think that context is super helpful in understanding like okay, where was you know, fire department in 23 to 24 to 25, 26, right?

So we can see the trends and understand kind of the history and then all of the current expenses and then and then the the requests for that budget year.

Right.

I think that understanding, at least for me in my brain, understanding that order of things helps me make better decisions and and with more information.

Um so maybe uh you know, I was thinking throughout, I guess starting in January until the budget's approved in late May or early June, just having uh a regular cadence of of these work sessions and having departments come.

I know we had a couple work sessions, very long ones um last month, but you know, spreading that out over the course of five months.

Um and we can just set those work sessions.

It's pretty easy for us as a council and and the mayor to kind of have every work session at least one or two departments being able to come before us, give us information, we can ask questions.

Um then is there is there a set time for the tentative budget to be proposed to the council?

I I I'm sure there's a it's uh the first deadline.

Yeah, we'll go ahead.

First council meeting in May.

We have to have the tenant.

For the tentative budget.

We've always done it a little early because Roundup Week, right?

Like so we don't want to have a uh council meeting on roundup week.

So we've always moved everything back a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

And so I think I think if we start that process, if it's in early January, maybe the tentative budget, depending on um how the mayor wants to do it, it can come before us a little bit earlier.

I know late early May seems extremely late.

I know we were ahead of the curve on that this year, but even um even earlier gives us a time uh to kind of go through it without uh too much you know chaos and maybe there's a way like I don't know, I don't always think the best when I'm standing here in front of everybody, but maybe with the mayor and Jason, we can get some decisions on some high-level things done earlier, which could make the rest of the maybe there's a way to focus on those things if that makes sense.

And the chaos certainly doesn't come from you, it's usually from us.

So yeah, just having just having that that earlier timeline and process, I think would be helpful.

And and even for new council members down the road, I think lets them dive into it pretty soon.

Because I know January's it's tough, everybody's coming back from break, but if if we've already had that timeline starting kind of November, December, so we're all aligned and then kick off January.

Um I think that would be helpful.

And I think just the things that you mentioned too that um like for finance, um October never November and December are really our busiest months because we're finishing up our audit.

A lot of times we're getting it done, you know, the middle of December before we're getting it.

Yeah, and I I would hope those so some of the heavy lifting we may not be kind of help at that time.

Yeah, that's fine.

I think more for it's more, I guess for the council just to start talking budget early.

Um and finance, I don't think would need to be too heavily involved with the November-December discussions, but I think just helping us understand each other in an open meeting.

Um then by the time January hits, we've we've had those discussions already, so we're ready to to kind of set priorities that the mayor can take for the tentative budget.

Can I clarify?

Um you're talking about the the council talking in November, December about their priorities, basically.

That's what's what I'm hearing.

Yeah, no, yeah.

So not not bringing in finance and department heads quite yet.

Just just more about you know, having a discussion amongst us and Jason, um Cameron Bo just just to start talking through it so we know okay, our priorities for this next next fiscal year.

This is what I feel interested to hear what you know, Rachel and Emily and Heather and Michelle think as well.

And then it kind of sets the baseline so that January isn't just raw open space.

It's it's we already have talked through a lot of those issues so that when finance comes into it, we'll be a little more prepared.

I can see that.

I would on election year.

I mean, let's we'll see.

We have four new people again, but um I want to make sure they have a a voice in the beginning of January.

Make sure that we listen to them too.

So that's the only thing, but maybe we could get reports back or kind of try to understand like what did you say the year over year changes or kind of some of those their current budget?

But they wouldn't be looking at their new requests at the time yet.

I yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

I don't know.

Yeah, I guess I guess we have time to to kind of figure it out.

I'm just talking very broadly.

Um yeah, we can figure out the specifics.

I Mr.

Mayor, if I may, I'm happy to follow your lead on that.

I I if there was more conversation here, that's I just have a separate question.

I don't want to change the topic if more people want to have input.

Well, go ahead, you're good.

Okay.

Um just on pages 83 um to 88 or excuse me, 87.

These are reflective of the mayor's budget, correct?

We didn't go redo that whole thing, it just would have been.

Yeah, I think that makes total sense.

I know why you guys did that, but I just wanted to clarify for any residents that go in and look at this that this is specific to a budget two times ago.

We kind of had a budget, and then we had the letter that kind of adjusted that budget, and now we have kind of a memo that adjusts that.

So I just wanted that clarity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Mayor.

So I do like discussing things earlier.

I guess my only thing with that is um we had a lot of priorities in the last one.

I don't even know the number of millions of uh what the council prioritized last time because we didn't know.

Yeah.

Like we were just this moving target.

So and I kind of see that with the departments too, that they come in and they have really high asked, but they don't really know where the the funding is available.

And it'd be able to like break it down like, hey, here's what I guess our increases, but here's our ask above if it we needed to go and seek other funding.

So it's kind of hard, I think, to prioritize, start prioritizing things back in November, December when we really don't know what the need funds will be.

Yeah.

I guess I guess something that's I'm just coming to mind.

We generally done just revenue projections once a year, right?

Yeah.

I don't know that we couldn't give some very preliminary looks at things in the fall to get a start, you know.

Like we know if there's a recession going on, or we know some things like that.

So maybe there's a way to at least if again, maybe we're not putting a budget together in November, but maybe we can have some economics.

Just something like if we were going to talk about it, maybe we should know what we're talking about.

Yeah.

So I think we found with this the hard most of the discussion with the budget, regardless of how we've done it this year or any year, it's just it's related to general fund, right?

So when we look at our utility funds, they're pretty straightforward.

We have a fee, the personnel part portion of our utility funds is a really small portion of the whole fund.

It doesn't overwhelm every anything.

Where with the general fund, it's almost all about people, right?

And so maybe we can approach it rather than line by line by department.

It's more like let's deal with that first and then kind of see what's left.

I don't know.

I'm just there's probably some ways to look at it.

That's not a wholesale change on what we do, but maybe just do it a little different approach.

I think we got some good ideas too moving forward, so we'll we'll work through those.

Any other questions on the 26-27 budget discussion?

Mayor, can you?

Yes.

Thank you.

So I I do like Jason's idea.

I would like to have the department has been earlier in here.

Kind of like what you just did where he gave us kind of an overview of what can have how many people would need what challenges he's facing.

Um I think that would be helpful to know what we're looking at and then the budget does come in for us so that we kind of had a heads up and more in depth detail of what's being needed and why.

So I I kind of like for myself to see how the department has to come to us sooner.

Um the finance department is worth the number or whatever.

I think it would be helpful for places the department has to stay on the podcast stuff.

Those are my thoughts.

Mayor, can I add to that?

I think that's a really that goes with this too.

It's kind of also hard to know what to set our priorities as if we haven't heard from the departments to hear what their priorities are.

So I kind of feel like when we do the the council's priorities, we're really just shooting from the hip.

But then when we get all the feedback, here's the actual money you have, here's what the departments actually need.

So maybe we kind of reverse some of that.

Yeah.

And I think maybe just to kind of bridge the gap.

I think it's it's helpful.

I mean, we're um Steve's presentation wasn't really related to this budget, right?

But it was very informative, and I learned a lot.

And so that's setting my brain for maybe next year at least we have some of that context.

So it doesn't necessarily have to be the budget season is in a vacuum, right?

It I think throughout the years we hear these things, we're gonna be more informed, and then uh things will change, of course, um, between the start of the budget discussions to the actual budget.

But um yeah, I think we could probably do both.

Just understanding the year over year context, that that's not necessarily tied to the budget approval.

It just helps us understand, like, okay, this particular department um hasn't received a lot of love in the budget for like two or three years, and we we should probably look at this more carefully.

Well, just the discussion, you know today, just like parks is in a in a bind in some ways, right?

We have a demand for a lot of parks.

We have made some maybe some promises for some parks, but it's very difficult to s to staff them, stay maintain them.

Yeah, so I uh I kind of like that if we can understand more with the challenges of the departments maybe later in the year as kind of like an overview thing, like I mean sh public works, right?

We have these water leaks.

Like, did do we like just knowing we have this and this is what we've done about it sort of thing.

But we don't even necessarily need to have the money completely discussed.

Like we we they can they can ballpark it like Steve and say, well, probably would need this many staff over this many years, but it's not like at that level, maybe it's this is what I'm thinking of.

Well, and we do some things with the utilities, like you think of power, like we've gone through this big rate study, and there's been a lot of analysis and done and a lot of things.

And it doesn't just set rates because it looks at all their expenses and all those things.

And um, we haven't really done rate study for water.

We could if if we chose just it the the fund is a little simpler, but that's a way to look at some of that off season, if you will, too.

And if you think about it in the general fund, what of what are what are most of our discussions on public safety, parks and rec, right?

Um obviously there's other things, streets and planning and all of those, but most of it's related to to those two areas.

And so maybe we spend more time looking at that a little bit more.

And I there's just I was come back like if you looked at the finance department budget, like most of our department budget is people and a few contracts that we manage and audit and a few things like that.

It's not like I think something like that would be good, it'd be easy to talk about, but it's the some public safety and parks and rec that really are the wild cards.

They just have a lot more demand.

Yeah, and sometimes public works.

I mean, probably those streets and sidewalks and all that.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Well, and we're fortunate here too with with streets.

So many of our streets are relatively new.

I've worked at cities where they're not, like, and um so a lot of our streets are in pretty good shape where you've seen cities that are older that are their streets are in a really bad shape and so we're fortunate there.

But things we can do now will help maybe prolong that time in the life on the streets.

So for the final budget, I'm gonna ask again the question that uh Councilman Walkart asked.

Are those last pages going to be updated to reflect this budget or they are not?

You know, just the new request funded.

What we did is we took I think I think what's in there.

I did a little reconciliation that just started from here's where the tentative budget was, essentially a 1.7 million dollar deficit, if you will, because that was the amount of the tax increase.

And then I just did a reconciliation line by line to see how we got from there to zero.

Okay, maybe I missed that.

So is that more page?

Did I click that?

I don't think you included it.

Okay.

I I will talked about it, but you haven't included it.

So that's up to you.

I will send it up.

I will send it out.

I haven't.

I think it was an interim budget.

There was a sheet of the case.

I did have that, but I needed to add the things for this one.

So I will email that out.

We we should include it because that's maybe I miss maybe I missed it.

Kind of like this.

This letter is sort of that.

It's sort of that, but I have an actual spreadsheet.

It just starts at this number and ends at zero.

So I know it's really budget and I can't do that.

Sometimes I think I've sent it and I have that yeah.

It was a lot of I'll email that out as soon as I get back to my desk.

It's there.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions for Dean?

Jason question for the council.

So I think it was last week, maybe two weeks ago.

I sent out a copy of the current campus master plan.

Um just wanting to know from the council.

I know that there have been some desires expressed by some on the council about looking at station 81, uh looking at other things on the campus.

Do we want to put any money towards updating that plan, or is this council good with the plan as it sits?

I don't know that I want to spend money on updating anything unless we're ready to spend money on doing it.

Okay.

Because like if we spend money and then a future, and but we're like, we're not gonna put we're not gonna do it.

Then a future council may just come along and say, let's redo it again.

So I don't want to spend money twice.

Yeah, I echo that.

I think um it would be really helpful though to have a round table work session where we pull out kind of a map and we talk through things and um I know some of the elements would have to be discussed in closed session as it's related to property.

Um but any thing that we can do to really just learn more about it and all get unified and united on the same uh trajectory, that would be great to have it on a work session.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm looking at the master plan.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I read it out.

And it doesn't look like we're really completely doing that.

It's like a piecemeal, but I mean when I'm looking when I'm looking at the buildings and the plaza and all the things, anyways.

Um I agree with Heather that unless we're gonna spend the money.

Um I do I think station 81 to me is a priority to me, uh the legacy center is a higher priority, to be honest.

I think looking at the operational efficiencies and possible I don't even know what you would call it, maybe renovations or something like that.

Um I talked with facilities and they said that there were some ways that they could help help 81 in the meantime, but I do think that 81 is a priority.

I just my in my view, it might be more like number two.

But again, the only reason why I bring this up in this context is because the courts are in station 81.

So we we just have to have an answer for that.

Now, whether it's a long-term solution or a temporary solution, we just have to, again, game plan for it.

And I personally don't think that it makes sense to continue to have the court in and the fire station as one thing unit.

It just to me it doesn't it doesn't make sense.

Um I think that I think that some of us gave suggestions of where the court could be located, even temporarily with if this if the master plan idea isn't available.

And I don't know if that has been explored.

Yes.

So the thought of moving it to the existing city hall, that's not feasible.

It's just won't meet the safety standards that a court would would demand.

So so again, that's why I bring up the question.

The next step on the master plan technically would be to build the the court and 81 around the same time.

Um but to your point, I think it's hard to move forward with 81 without an answer or at least a plan on on the court.

That's that's all I'm saying.

My perspective is that this fiscal year we're data gathering.

So we're gathering the information on what it would take to renovate 81.

We're gathering information on what it would take for an operations and possible renovational legacy center.

We're gonna gather information on the court and where that may or may not go.

And then next budget cycle, this council will be faced with here are the facts that we have found.

What would you like to do next?

That's how I've seen it.

Is that reflective of how you guys feel?

So not an architectural design and all the stuff or so 80 in order to know the full cost of 81, we would need to know the architectural design of it, right?

So they'll um what I would actually love is to see you the council come back with scopes of work for both of those projects, both the legacy center project and 81, so that we could see your full scope, and then we could know, okay, we've allocated these dollars, but what is the scope of the project as far as what we're asking for, and then we can lean into some of those pieces.

That's how I see it, but uh you know, open to I'd also like to know the challenges of security at the old city hall, to be honest.

So I mean Steve can go on at length about it.

I can talk to Steve about it.

I I guess I'll go over it.

It it won't work without spending a tremendous amount of money.

And if money's no obstacle, then we could make it work.

But I think it might be I think it might be.

Well, I think so.

So one thing I'll just add for the I agree it makes sense to the court and the fire station, maybe different buildings, but I also know it's more expensive to have two separate buildings than one building, right?

So if if we were to build a brand new station 81, would it make sense to have it more multi-use, right?

Like I mean, not how it is now where it's it's an older building and it was kind of retrofitted to what it's doing right now, but but I think it makes sense if we can combine two purposes in one building and it saves money, then I'd be open to that.

Um I know like just looking through the city master plan, there's like a parking structure and there's like a library arts building.

Obviously, a lot of this is mostly outdated because I think it's six years old, 2020 was when it was done last.

So yeah, I think for cost efficiency, if if we can combine efforts if we were to bond for something large like that, it makes sense to um combine the purpose.

Well, we can always begin with the end in mind, like this building, right?

Right now, the library is housed here, but that's not its end.

So when we look at the scope of work for station 81, we can say give us you know phase one that includes the court, but also begin with the end in mind of what would phase two include, and we can uh forgive my expression, but kill two birds with one stone, right?

To your point, James.

So I think I mean we all know that station 81 with the court and the legacy center, those are the the on the older end, we're gonna have to at some point in the future we're gonna have to replace those.

So seeing seeing what would be the best way um to maybe do more at once for a lower price rather than you know, three separate buildings over time that eventually cost more money just with inflation as well.

Yeah, and construction costs going up over time.

Yeah, it would be more cost efficient to do it sooner than later, but obviously we want to do it at the appropriate time.

So and and again, uh by no means do I expect the council to make a final decision today.

We can always amend the budget, right?

You don't if you're still undetermined on whether or not we want to do what study right now, we can always make that determination at a later date.

So just wanted to have the discussion.

May I may I make a comment?

Sure.

Um I was doing a redoing the city campus and asked the plan.

Um again, I mean I don't know if this is the right time to do that.

I would like to see what the legacy center study says.

Um how much that costs and how you go forward to do that, but I would definitely like to present a different option and do a study on that that's a little more modest and doesn't take all the expensive items that Carl One has any other questions for Dean.

Thank you, Dean.

Okay, we are at item number three adjournment.

I will happily entertain.

So moved.

Okay, council member Newell, do I have a second?

I have a second from Councilmember Lockhart.

Uh all in favor say yes.

Yes, yes, I think I or yes, that works.

Okay, looks like we're good.

So we are adjourned till tomorrow.

I our meeting starts tomorrow, I believe, Tisha at 5.

Uh 4:30 or 30.

Is it 4 30?

It is 4 30 tomorrow.

Yes.

So we shall see you at 4 30 tomorrow.

Thank you for those that came.

We appreciate seeing you.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.